


For the lies I have told

by BehindBrokenWindows



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Character Study, Heavy Drinking, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, Self-Hatred, and treasure island, kind of, so there's angst, to both black sails
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-07-29
Packaged: 2019-06-18 05:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15478515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BehindBrokenWindows/pseuds/BehindBrokenWindows
Summary: “I’m here,” John said, “to make sure you don’t drown yourself in your cup.” When the captain smiled, it was a mirthless thing, like the grinning teeth of a bleached skull.“That’s what I said.”*Years past their last encounter, John still has not been able to let go the memories. When he learns that his old Captain is in Port Royal - when he learns why he is there - he is left with no choice but to seek him out and save him from himself.





	For the lies I have told

The nights were quiet, always. No words were left to be said between them, and though John was not prone to keep silent, his words lacked the enthusiasm or the self-assuredness he’d had as a young man. When he’d believed that he could turn any person’s mind with the use of his words. Now Madi lay with her beautiful back to him, and the small distance between them was a chasm he could not cross. Some nights he thought about throwing himself into that chasm and disappear in dreams about what if.

They woke every morning and went to their tasks. Cooking, cleaning the inn, making all ready for the same old patrons and perhaps some new faces as well. A merchant ship was to arrive today, it might stay a few days. Then, perhaps some sailors would find their way to the inn, stay two and three in a room together to save coin. That would be something.

John hated whenever he heard of a ship coming in, hated it even more when not one familiar sailor came to stay at the Spyglass. With every ship that came and went his hope dwindled a little more. It was a gnarled old thing now; black and poisonous in the pit of his stomach.

But it had been many years since the old days, and he should not feel so melancholy. He should not feel so alone, in a roomful of people.

“We need more vegetables. Some rum too,” Madi reminded him, and he noted the things in his mind. He would remember.

John, when there was no more need of him for a few hours, went to the port to watch the ships, and sure enough, a small merchant vessel was just coming in. Behind it, John saw a small warship as well. Were they in luck they would be busy tonight, and drink would flow.

John stood there a moment longer, ignored the looks of passers-by as he closed his eyes and pulled in the salty tang of the sea, held it in his lungs, let it fill his system and take him back to a time when such an action, and the longing it brought would be unthinkable.

 _I don’t care much for the sea,_ he’d told the Captain, and then he’d talked of freedom, _freedom… from you_. Now he had that freedom, and what had he done with it? He’d stolen the life of a person he loved, had made her nothing. It was all for nothing.

He turned on his heel, swung his crutch around and stalked off before he could finally mount the courage to throw himself in the water.

It was a lively evening. All their rooms were taken, most occupied by several sailors together. Either they hadn’t bothered walking further, or every other place was as busy as they were. Some men would even be sleeping by the fire on the wooden benches.

Both merchant sailors and Naval officers took up rooms at the Spyglass, but kept themselves separate. There was a young red-headed lieutenant among them, and it made John’s stomach twist painfully. What he wouldn’t have done to have seen the captain like that. He realised, yet again, how little he truly knew of his former captain, of a man he’d thought his closest ally, almost a friend. The closest thing to a friend John had ever had.

What had he been like, in those days before Lord Hamilton? Would he have been here, laughing with his comrades? Perhaps he would visit a brothel, like John knew his patrons would soon do. Would he find himself a man, perhaps, or hadn’t he realised his inclinations at the time?

John skilfully wove himself between the patrons, agile even on his crutch, even with a tray of drinks in his hand. It was something he hadn’t been able to do at the start. Now it was as natural as swimming had once been and a part of him (one that he would not acknowledge) hated himself for it.

Late into the evening, when most of the young men had gone out for other kinds of entertainment, John seated himself by a small group of merchant sailors who had earlier tried to gauge him into a conversation. He leaned his arms on the crutch he’d put between his thighs, and Captain Flint was sitting on his shoulder, impatiently nipping at his ear for scraps.

John let them speak at first, asked questions about their Captain, the places they’d been, where they were headed. Then they begged him for a story, for they heard – it was why they were here actually – people said, well – there was always a good story to be heard at the Spyglass Inn. And John laughed, ducked his head as if flattered.

“In my days,” John would always start, and the men would look at him with those wide-eyed expressions you rarely see on grown men. Had they known he couldn’t have more than twelve, maybe fifteen years on them, they would fall off their chair. “When I was still a capable rigger and sailed for mother England –” as if he had ever done anything for anyone but himself – “the times were very different indeed.” So very different. A war had been waged that England knew little about, that these young men, although they had probably heard of, did not truly _know_ anything about at all. How could anyone who wasn’t there understand what it had meant? How could they understand the sacrifices?

John spun an elaborate tale of half-truths and a web of lies he himself could not untangle. All the while Madi was watching him from where she was cleaning glasses behind the bar.

 _I do not care for your stories_ , she had told him one night. _I do not see you in them_.

Did she see him even in the blue of his eyes these days? He still saw a Princess whenever he looked at her. A Princess that had not needed saving.

The men clung to the fabric of his imagined reality with excitement and wonder. Oh, the things old Mr. Silver had seen in his days! Oh, the battles he had waged! His courage and his strength were unparalleled. How strong he was, that even after his tragic accident, he had not fallen into a life of poverty.

The officers returned after a while, arms around each other to keep each other upright. The red-headed one was slumping in the arms of a comrade, blood on his face and too drunk to stand on his own feet. John couldn’t look at that, so he excused himself with a kind smile and a joke, then returned to the kitchens.

What would a young James McGraw have thought of him now? What would he think of the old, injured mariner with long black curls and a matching beard, always with a green parrot on his shoulder and a smile at the ready?

“Oy! Get us some water in here and a clean rag!” John sighed but grabbed the things and hobbled out.

“Where’s the pretty negress?” one of the officers asked when he saw him. “We didn’t ask for your tired face, did we?” John smiled and set the things on the table beside the injured lieutenant. John meant to go, but something in the man’s face stoked his ire. This was what they thought of him, of course – this was what _he_ would think of him. His next move was not a conscious decision.

John stepped closer, put the butt of his crutch on the man’s foot and grabbed his elbow with his free hand. He leaned close to the man with a smile that he knew would look friendly to the others. They did not see that he put all his weight on the man’s toes, they did not feel his fingers dig into their arm with strength that could break.

“Be kind to you host, officer.” The man seemed too astonished for words, so John limped off, innocent in the way only an old and injured man can be.

*

_I hope that one day you will be able to understand why I did what I did. But I know you never will. It haunts me, the look on your face. Some nights I can’t sleep for the thought of it, others I wake up in a panic after you shoot me. I don’t know why I dream of that, perhaps some part of me knows it should have been me instead of Dooley._

*

Madi spent whatever free time she had reading the books John brought her and writing down her thoughts, the meanings she found, as if she would someday need her notes to discuss her views with another. Or perhaps she was trying to gauge, from the actions of imaginary men, the reasons for why John had acted as he did, perhaps she was trying to understand his choices. Perhaps she was trying to find ways to forgive him, like he always tried to find ways to earn her forgiveness. She didn’t know that she could just ask him and he would tell her the truth, but perhaps she didn’t want to hear his reasons because she knew they would never be enough.

John never disturbed her when she was reading, he preferred watching the crinkles in her brow, the concentration on her face. She tried so hard for him, and he knew it was only because she didn’t have a choice. She was a prisoner in this place. She couldn’t understand that he was too. She did all that she could to make her imprisonment as comfortable as possible and that was what hurt John the most.

*

_”They left the plantation two months ago. They’ve settled not far from st. augustine. I believe they will stay.”_

*

They sailed to Madagascar and India, they visited the Dutch and the Spanish parts of the New World, they went north and south and east and west, for a couple of years. It was not happiness, per se. But the sight of the sea and all the world before them was liberating. John knew that the freedom made Madi feel guilty. What right did she have to freedom when so many of her people were suffering, enslaved, living like dogs?

They had talked often of helping in the beginning, when they’d first gotten their feet beneath themselves again. And then they’d just… stopped. It took John some time to realise that his hesitation had been what broke her. It took a while before he realised that she didn’t stay because she loved him, but because she couldn’t find her way back home; because she hadn’t a home any longer and all the candles had burned out.

*

_For all my talk of your curse – I know that it hurt you, that my accusation shook you and worked as wood to the fire in your heart – you are not, and have never been the reason for the destruction of those closest to you. The pattern is not a pattern at all, for those people made their own choices and you cared enough for them to respect their wishes._

_I am perhaps a hypocrite of the worst kind. All that which I touch die beneath my hands. My friends may be still breathing, but they are not alive. I claimed their lives when I took the choice from their hands and decided for them. For_ you.

_You were so ready to hate yourself it wasn’t hardship at all to make you believe my words, and I hardly realised what it was I had done. That is not an excuse for the inexcusable._

*

“He’s in Port Royal.” John froze with the tray in his hand, as if someone had put a bullet through his chest. “Alone. Drinking the town dry they say.” The captain hadn’t been one to drink excessively very often. And Thomas certainly wouldn’t permit it.

“Why –”

“The other one died off was what I heard. Natural causes.” John returned to the kitchen and crumbled.

The smiles of the innkeeper were distant that night, and all the regulars noted the change. Patrons parted long before they used to, and some young men cursed the old fool for having no story for them that night. John Silver cleaned the tables and walked them all out with that sad smile and a half-hearted wave.

Silence reigned in the place as a pair of large, gnarled hands washed mug after mug, silence that seemed to seep from the very marrow of the man’s bones and consume every part of the room, deepen every shadow, make the lines of his face sharper. The negress was nowhere to be seen but from time to time a floorboard creaked overhead and sent the silence echoing between the walls of the inn.

When there was no more for him to do, the innkeeper climbed the stairs with difficulty, as if the day had aged him ten years.

“Where is he, then?” her voice was sharp, made him flinch. John told her. “And when will you be leaving?” His head snapped up at the words and he looked directly at her. She was turned the other way, arranging some things on a table.

“I don’t – I mean…” It had been long since he forgot the use of his tongue in her presence. He could weave any tale to any number of strangers, yet his negress, a witch and a Princess and the most formidable woman he had ever met, the most formidable person he had ever destroyed, tied his tongue in his mouth whenever she was near.

He’d been able to seduce her with words of honey and golden promises in years past and long forgotten. Now he could not mount the smallest of defences.

“You must go,” she said, her voice gentler now, as if she knew the turmoil in him, even after so many years. As if she understood what the thought of his old captain did to the inner workings of his mind.

“Will you not come with me?” She smiled, gently, and shook her head.

“Someone must stay here and take care of business. You can take care of yourself.” John cried himself to sleep that night, and he knew that she heard him for she turned around and laid her small hand on his arm after a while. It was more intimate than they had been in months. He had never been more ashamed, but how could he ever repair the damage he had done? He was in the water again, trapped with his nose just above the surface where every little wave threatened to kill him. And always he was struggling for a way out, but the leg kept him where he was, and the web of his own lies always tightened around him until they were the truth he made for himself, the truth he hid behind. The truth that would strangle him some day.

 _We can have happiness_ , he’d said.

*

“What is this thing between you?” she had asked, long ago. He had never been able to tell her.

He stood ready to depart once again from his inn. The small bag with necessities was over his shoulder and his crutch was under his arm yet he could not force himself past the threshold.

“We cared too much.” His voice was a silent croak in the misty morning. The fog lay low and ominous on the still water in the harbour, and John could not deny that the thought of going into that heavy, white blanket chilled him. He’d never liked mist since Skeleton Island, felt his moorings begin to slip, felt his mind reeling and his breath quicken at the thought of it, even now. It wasn’t like before, when the mist had been a welcome friend, a thing that would hide you from terrible things. Now those things lived inside it, and in John’s head. 

“We cared too much for each other to care for ourselves. Had I acted selfishly, we would not be here, now. Had I acted truly selfishly I would have descended to the deepest, darkest places of the earth and the mind with him, and we would all lie dead at the bottom of the sea somewhere, carelessly drifting with the tides, nothing more than bones, devoid of all meaning and worth. But I cared too much for your lives even if I knew the price I would need to pay. Even if I knew my name would become an oath on your lips, that you’d come to hate me.”

*

He’d not sent word to his old captain. He simply found a ship that was to go directly to Port Royal and bought himself passage. The cost mattered little.

Then he was underway, at sea again after years of absence. It spoke to him with every wave against the hull, the wind raged at him and the skies threatened him for he had defied them so many times they would not let him go this one. They would bear all their might down on him and take the rest of his body to where his leg lay, only a bone following the tides at the bottom of the sea, now.

But Long John Silver stood tall and proud, still, and he did not let himself be overwhelmed. He stared down all the rage of the elements like Captain Flint had done in his time, and he won.

Even if it was a struggle, John made himself liked by the crew and passengers of the ship, let not show how he was thrumming with nervousness at the prospect of meeting one old and haggard man, even as all the powers of the sea could not make him shiver. There was especially one young girl that he took a fancy to. Her parents were reluctant, at first, to let him near her, but when he convinced them that he had no bad intentions toward their daughter, they let her play with him and listen to his stories.

He told her of love as they watched the sun being swallowed by the sea. She was sitting on the railing at the bow of the ship, legs over the side as he held her safe.

“You must never fool yourself, my dear. Love is not supposed to hurt, love is not supposed to be twisting together with agony and lies and shame. Love is not supposed to be a cage where one is more powerful than the other. It is important that you remember this. Many will try to fool you if you let them.”

He had always liked children. They still thought life worth living, they still thought the world a wonderful place.

“Fifteen men on the dead man’s chest – yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum,” he sang to her in the night.

“What’s a dead man’s chest?” she asked.

“Drink and the devil had done for the rest – yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum.” He told her of the uninhabitable rock in the ocean where he’d once been marooned together with fourteen of his old crew. He told her there was a captain there who’d willed them to freedom by pulling the island itself across the ocean by the powers of him mind. They had not been fifteen at the outset.

He told her the tale of the boy who cried wolf.

“You must never lie. You must never lie to others and you must never lie to yourself. A lie revealed, and you will never have a believing ear again. But it is the lies you tell yourself that truly fester, that will eat you, that will haunt you, that will end you.”

“Which such lie ate your leg?” the girl asked politely.

“I told myself that I didn’t care. It is the most dangerous of lies.”

When the ocean rebelled, he held her hair back as she heaved into her bucket because her parents were doing just the same, yet the vicious rolling of the ship settled him, brought him back to another time, before he carried all this weight on his back, the weight of life stolen from living things.

It was a long journey and had the little girl not been there he might have despaired and let the ocean take him with its cold limbs long ago. A part of him longed for it, a part that whispered to him in the night and told him that they would all be free, that his death would break their chains. As if he still had that sway over them.

When they arrived at last he was sad to see her go, and she hugged him in that trusting manner no one had ever done before. He found a piece-of-eight hidden in his jacket and gave it to her, told her to never lose it and he would come to her whenever she was in need. He wondered if she would remember him when she was old enough to be a woman, or if she’d forget him like children tend to do.

It was no hardship to find the captain once he was in Port Royal, but he found himself another inn and rested there. The longer he spent in the port, the more reluctant he was to find the man and speak with him. What could he possibly say? It was almost all he had thought about during his travels but now he was at a loss. He’d somehow managed to convince himself that the man would be glad to see him, yet now he knew that was wishful thinking at best and suicide at worst. John had not only broken him once, when taking the war from him, but now twice, when the future he’d promised him turned out to be so short.

They had many good years together, John told himself and it felt hollow. He and Madi had had many years together. None of them had been good.

The next day he bought passage back to Bristol and that was that.

*

“You thieving, lying, cowardly _shit_!” Had he expected the captain to have changed since he last saw him – sometimes he had told himself that he would have, for surely Thomas would have that sway over him – he was painfully mistaken. “Are you so afraid of me, even now?”

“I am not afraid of you,” John whispered to the air before him. “I’m afraid _for_ you.” When he turned around, James Flint was standing there, hands shaking, swaying on his feet.

“That why you’re running the moment you hear of my presence here?” It would be impossible to convince him that he was there _because_ of him.

“Can we speak somewhere more private, please?” John did not show how the shame consumed him when he looked at the tired, broken excuse of a human being now in front of him, and how it made him want to throw himself to the sea and release him from his chains. The confident prowl of Captain Flint was not a part of the James who had survived John Silver to reunite with the most important person in his life, and then survived the second loss of that person. This man walked like a kicked dog.

“Why are you here?” Flint – was he Flint these days? – asked when they hid in the corner of his inn.

“Vacation.”

“Lie.”

“I work on a merchant ship. We stopped by.”

“ _Lie_!” Flint growled.

“Then tell me why I’m here.” There was silence in their small, secluded corner as Flint nursed his drink, bringing it to his lips with scarred and shaking hands. He threw back one after the other until he seemed to lose his touch on reality.

“You’re here to torment me,” he whispered into his cup, almost as if he thought John wasn’t there at all, only the figment of his rum-soaked imagination. “A mocking shadow on my shoulder. Reminding me of everything I’ve lost, everything that’s ever been taken from me. Because I was too weak to hold on, to protect the people I loved.”

“I’m here,” John said, “to make sure you don’t drown yourself in your cup.” When the captain smiled, it was a mirthless thing, like the grinning teeth of a bleached skull.

“That’s what I said,” Flint told his cup. His shoulders were sagging like he could no longer hold the burdens that had rested there for so long, as if the world had finally broken the unbreakable. The captain moved to empty his cup again and John reached out before he could think and stopped him, locked his fingers around Flint’s. Flint looked up as if struck, hand stilling in the air. His eyes were wild, frantic as they met John’s and John saw insanity dancing like hellfire in the blood-shot, bottle green eyes that had held his so often with a surety that John thought they would now never know again.

“Did you think you were imagining me?” The silence was more than enough answer. Flint twisted out of his grip and emptied his cup before John could stop him. The question arose as to how often Flint imagined him in his drunken stupors these days, and why he was on his mind at all in a time like this. John could only imagine that he was the only thing on which Flint could focus his anger these days, and that had always been his anchor, his manner of keeping his head above the water for just a little bit longer. John could see that he was slowly giving up now, as his anger drained into something else.

“I knew I couldn’t be,” Flint murmured at last. “Never thought of you as old.” John’s beard had filled in over the years and he’d let it grow. Years ago, Madi had let herself play with the novelty and made braids in it, fastening trinkets in it. When she stopped he couldn’t bear it and learned to do it himself. He hoped, still, that it sometimes made her think of good memories. His hair was longer too, but he still kept the foremost locks from his face with a tie. It did indeed make him look old, but both his hair and his beard were still black and thick. 

The years had been less kind to Flint, or perhaps it was only these last few months that had aged him so terribly. His beard was unkempt and longer than Silver had ever seen it. He’d let his hair grow again – Thomas’s wish, perhaps – and it was just down to his shoulders, tickling his cheek as he let it fall in his face. He didn’t seem to bother with a tie any longer and his hair hid how his hairline had receded. He was dirtier, smelled fouler, than John had ever seen him, and the abhorrence was something he had not expected. He knew what he would be met with on this futile quest, and yet he could not have imagined the physical changes in his captain, had not let himself believe that the proud and defiant man he had known would let himself sink so low. The embarrassment was another thing he had not expected, and it curled twisted and ugly in his stomach.

When the barmaid came to refill Flint’s cup yet another time, John sent her away with a glare. Meanwhile, the captain had crumbled onto the table and John had to shake him awake.

“It’s time for you to retire.” John’s voice brokered no argument, but he had to haul Flint to his feet and let him lean an arm over his shoulders. John was broader now than he had been, thicker in the muscles, and even though his balance was almost as good as it had been when he was still a whole man, Flint was an unfamiliar and heavy weight at his side. No matter, John trudged on because he could not survive to let this man down again, and because he remembered, once upon a time a crew of pirates had survived a tempest and a calm and arrived on an unknown island only to be taken prisoners by the inhabitants and led far through the thick forest, and he remembered a strong shoulder and a friend’s reassuring hand on his as he leaned on that unshakable figure for support.

John put his old captain to bed and left before pity could overtake him. On his way out, he paid for a bath to be drawn in the morning and a good breakfast.

John walked in Port Royal that night, passed many a sailor, many a beggar, many a cripple like himself. He was proud, then, to know that he was not so broken by his accident, that his respect for himself had not died but blazed brighter than ever and kept him alive and functioning better than he ever had before. Looking back, it was clear to him that he hadn’t needed be so afraid to appear weak. It was the time in his life he had been the strongest.

*

_Madi doesn’t understand. She confuses what we had with a twisted form of love. She can’t understand that what we had was greater than that. That it was deeper than that, darker than that. She doesn’t understand that you made me, and that I kept you alive. She doesn’t understand that our hearts beat as one, that I breathed for you and you breathed for me. Can they understand, truly, the way I put thoughts in your head and you in mine? How can such a thing be broken, save by a ruthlessly sharpened knife parting flesh from living flesh like removing a limb from a body? I didn’t know to cauterise the wound I inflicted upon myself when I set you free._

*

Flint didn’t smell so foully in the morning, and his hair was not greasy and tangled. He’d changed his clothes. John was almost surprised to find that he hadn’t ignored the bath completely.

But he did not look good, and he was nursing a cup of rum already, to chase away the sickness from the night before. There was a half-empty plate of food before him, which he nibbled at slowly, as if not to upset his stomach.

Flint did not look up when John sat down opposite him, nor did he look surprised to see him, but his brow crinkled, and his mouth turned downward.

Flint did not speak, and for once neither did John. He was content to sit and watch the man eat slowly. He looked better in the morning light, more alive and refreshed. It was not a great feat for a man who looked the day before like death had already claimed him. The silence seemed to bother him, though, but John would not ease his mind. Let him get angry, let him lash out. John would get no truth from him if not. Flint spoke at last, and his words were biting.

“You know,” he said over his cup of rum, “when I first told him what you’d done, he praised you. ‘Good’, he said, ‘that someone had the courage to stand up to you and stop the bloodshed’. When I told him why you did it, when I told him that it was to save your own skin that you killed the hopes of so many, he knew at once that you were worse than –”

“I didn’t do it to save my own skin. I did it for _you_! I did it so that you could find happiness, I did it so Madi could have a life. By that time, I was so confused as to my relationship with you. It was more than I could possibly understand and even I could not tell where I ended and you began. My preservation instinct, in consequence, had started to extent to you, to her. I could not bear to see you kill yourself for even a cause so noble! Not when I knew it would have been for nothing. Your deaths would have been for nothing!”

“And our lives, what happened after, what good did those years of life do, other than make us miserable?” Flint’s words were sharp, meant to hurt, to shame and kill every attempt at justification for his sins.

“You can’t tell me that you and Thomas were never happy,” John said, and his voice broke. “Please, do not tell me that you never found peace together. After everything –” Flint turned his face away and John’s plea seemed to shake him. “After everything we – _you_ – suffered. Tell me you found happiness for a while.” John hadn’t heard his own voice so rough since that last fight with Madi before silence settled between them like a noose around their necks. It felt like gravel up his throat.

“It was good,” Flint said, “at times.”

When John returned with his things – he had rented the room beside Flint’s – he found his old captain in a drunken stupor again. He was quarrelling with the owner of the inn, disturbing the other patrons enough that he was threatened with banishment. John sighed and had the barmaid take his things to his room, then took the captain like he had before and brought him to his own room.

“I miss him!” Flint cried when John closed the door. “I miss him so much.” He hiccupped, swayed into John unconsciously. “He left me,” Flint said on a sob, “how could he leave me again?” John had never seen a grown man cry, but Flint was shaking uncontrollably in his arms, curled in on himself as if to protect the broken things in his chest. “I hate you.” Flint whimpered, even as he clung to him. “You ruined me. You took everything from me and when at last there was nothing left of me you sent me to him as if I could ever be whole again, as if I could be the man he had loved again. It hurts so much. It hurts, and I want it to stop. How can it ever stop?” _It won’t_ , John said in his mind, _it will never stop hurting_. Flint looked up at him through wet eyes as if he heard him and the anguish on his face was more than John could bear. He staggered back and Flint did the same, crumbling onto his bed with his head in his palms.

Was this what Flint became when he had nowhere to direct his anger, when he had no goal, nothing to live for? Was he so useless, alone? Why could he not pull himself together and move on like people did? Why must he torture John so, and make him feel so terrible? Regret had been his constant companion for years and he was used to its sting. Why did it burn bright enough now to engulf them both and leave nothing but charred bones where they once stood tall and proud about to make the world crumble at their feet?

 _Was it worth it?_ he could ask, but he didn’t, because John Silver had never been a particularly bold man.

He watched as Flint twisted on the bed as if the agony was a physical thing, and perhaps it was for a man who felt so deeply. “Why am I – the cruel, the monster – still breathing, when every good, deserving person I have ever loved and cherished perish? Why would God see me alive, and take those who wish to better the world instead of seeing it burn?” John had no answer to his questions. _You are not a monster_ , he could say, and it would ring hollow.

John left when his captain fell asleep. When he passed the beggars and the cripples this time he didn’t think himself strong. He saw now that they were better than him, luckier than him. He almost answered the call of the sea that day, yet he knew that Flint would follow him, and it would not be worth it. He was right, it had all been for nothing, and John knew now that he threw away his life on Skeleton Island, and what he’d thought a victory then tasted now like ashes in his mouth. Had he truly not seen? Of course he had, even as Flint surrendered there had been that feeling, that whispering in the back of his mind and John knew whose voice it was. That voice had never left, and over the years it had grown mocking, spotting as he wilted in the web of the lies he told himself.

He had been to Port Royal before, many times before – long before he fell into the spell that was Captain Flint. The place was not the same, unrecognisable even – or perhaps that was just him, so gnarled and twisted he could not recognise himself in the water of an undisturbed puddle or the glass of a shop window.

If he left Long John Silver now, shed the cloak and stepped into the life of a man he could barely remember save for that wide, dazzling smile that now felt like a headache – could he be free?

Freedom. He had freedom once upon a time. The word mocked him with every thud of his crutch on the ground. He could go nowhere; the cloak was as much a part of him now as the hair on his head and the ache in his bones. He was tied to this life he had not chosen, this life that was now all that was left. He’d thought he was the one holding the key, that his death might free Madi and Flint from the chains he’d put on them – but perhaps that was not how it worked at all. Perhaps, when all hope was lost, Madi and the Captain had plotted together one last time and put their chains around John’s neck in the form of memories he’d rather forget, and dreams he’d never truly wanted to see broken, so that if they must go down, at least he would fall with them.

*

_Some things should not be said, some words not see the light of day. When that wall crumbles and the illusions splinters and the roof is coming down blame not the tardiness of repair or the blindness of onlookers but the words you have spoken to fragile things. The storm itself would stop at your insistence, the water dry from the seas._

_No, blame not others for your brazenness and way with words, don’t think me weak for falling for your charm and blame me not for being strong for a while in the delirium of your presence. The lie is an easy thing and it needs shelter in me and your eyes elsewhere than on the blackened hole in the depth of my soul where the lie rests in comfort and infects what once was young and strong._

*

The captain was still asleep when John returned, so he busied himself about the room, arranged what few things Flint had littered about the place in a fashion that was so far removed from the man John had know he was almost convinced he’d walked into the room of a stranger. But he knew Flint better than he knew himself.

He did not hear Flint wake. “I want it to end, John,” he whispered, and John knew it was the first time he heard his given name from those lips. But he wasn’t _Mr. Silver_ anymore, was he? They had long since passed that, and yet it had never been so blatantly expressed. “I can’t take it any longer.”

“You have to.” John didn’t have a reason, not one he could voice aloud. The captain would not believe him if he told him the truth.

“No.” _You have to, for my sake._ But perhaps that would be his longed-for revenge, to go down and bring John with him. It would be no revenge at all but a relief he would never admit to.

“He would not want this for you.” It was the only angle, and if it hurt Flint all the more – it did, John saw it on his face; he wore the expression that had been there always on Skeleton Island and John hated nothing more in this world – that pain would have to be accepted, if it could spare his old captain’s life, if it could save him from himself.

Flint’s fists twitched in the bedsheets, tightening and slackening over and over as if he couldn’t decide between giving up or burning the world and himself with it.

“He is not here to have an opinion on the matter,” Flint ground out, and John felt the air shift in the room as anger overtook his senses as he knew it did Flint’s. It wasn’t something he could control, the way he was so attuned to this man he hadn’t seen for so long, but he wished he had not forgotten what it felt like – to feel only the slightest measure of the anguish that Flint had never lived without.

John fisted the front of Flint’s shirt the way he’d never dared think of before, and pulled his face to his own level.

“I will not allow you to give up. You will cling to whatever is left and you will prove to the world that you are _stronger_ than this. That you can never be broken! You will be the man you told me you were, you will be the man who bent the world to his will, who brought fear into any heart that heard his name!” Flint smiled only bitterly and sagged back to the bed, making John stumble so he had to steady himself on the bedframe. When Flint looked at him there was no fire in his eyes, only dead dreams and a love so abused it didn’t resemble love at all, only the blood and bruises of beaten knuckles.

“What is there for me to cling to? Even I cannot bring back the dead.” Flint didn’t stutter, didn’t sob. His words were steady and measured, and tears spilled from his eyes. Silent. Hopeless.

John’s leg gave out on a tremble and he crumbled to the bed, slid awkwardly to the floor. The crutch slid off the bedframe and clattered to the ground. The sound of it disturbed no one – there was no one there to disturb except a ghost and a shadow.

John’s hand trembled in his lap and his neck was too tired to keep his head held proud. He let it rest on the bed, closed his eyes on a shaky exhale, let his shoulders sag now that no one was watching. He could not bear the weight any more.

John dozed and he dreamt of fire, the rolling seas, hands around his neck and a knife at his throat. What woke him at last, what made his stomach churn, what put that ice-cold dread in him, was a red-headed body face down in the sea amongst the debris of his own vessel. A captain going down with his ship.

The captain was so still when John moved he had to push himself from the floor in a frenzy to reach his neck and put two fingers against his pulse. It was beating slowly, steadily, weakly as if it too was giving up. John felt it failing beneath his fingers.

“Flint!” He called his name and shook his body and it did no good. Both knees on the bed, John clutched his captain’s shirt, pressed his face into his chest and screamed his agony as if he might transfer it from himself to the body beneath him.

Flint flinched, grabbed him by the throat with a fierce growl and that furious grimace John had first seen when Singleton’s head was bashed in. John rejoiced to see it now, even if it was directed at himself. At least there was something still remaining of the passion he once admired.

John put his fingers again to Flint’s neck and found his pulse strong.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry – I thought…” John sagged, and the expression slipped from Flint’s face like sand between John’s helpless fingers. “I hate to see you wasting away like this.” Flint closed his eyes, but John didn’t remove himself from the bed, sat there quietly watching Flint’s face, and it was like being dropped into the sea to find it utterly abandoned by all the life that once kept it alive, that made it a mystery. “Come to Bristol with me. You might stay with us for a while until you’ve found somewhere to settle.” At no point had he considered such an option and had not thought a second of it before offering it. He took himself by surprise, but the captain seemed not to have heard at all.

“You hate to see me like this,” Flint rasped, “because it reminds you that one day – one day, you will fall too. It reminds you that we are not invincible, that we have nothing on the years running from us. It reminds you that we are more fragile than anyone even though we were the ones who claimed to be above it all. We have given ourselves to the darkness and it will consume us.”

“I hate to see you like this because you could be so much more!” John’s voice wavered. “What would he think of you – James McGraw? Tell me.” Flint turned his head away from all the times he’d betrayed the man he once was. “You are that man, you could still be that man, if you only let me help you. Come to Bristol with me.”

“Have you ever accepted anyone’s help? What makes you think I will accept yours now?” It was not a no, John told himself. It was not a no.

John returned to his own chamber, but sleep would not come. By the window, a candle was flickering happily, and John stared at it from his place on the bed yet saw not the brightness of it nor the hope it held. He had been that brightness, that hope, to so many people. Now he was the shadow lurking in the corner of the room where the light couldn’t reach. Now he was the story that kept children awake at night.

Could he find back to that man? Could he dig him from his shallow grave on Skeleton Island and find the words he would need to convince his captain to return to life with him? But he was right – what did Flint have to cling to? The war was out of his reach, the only person he had truly loved, the person he would give anything for, was gone. He could live for himself, but what kind of life was there that James Flint could live? He could not return to the life of the pirate, he was too old, too wasted. England or English service he could not stand to bear. He could never love again. John had seen it in him. There was nothing left in him that could love, not after Thomas. He had used it all up. No, there was nothing for Flint to cling to but John’s desperation.

Wasn’t it more of a punishment, then, to ask him to be strong? Had John any pity he would kill him, and perhaps that was what Flint was hoping for now – but surely he knew John had never, and would never be capable of such a thing. Of course – he knew John was too selfish for such a thing. And perhaps, John thought, a very small part of him, felt the justice of Flint’s suffering. It was not a part he was proud of, and it was decidedly not enough to save him from the fires of Hell, in the end, but it was there.

*

_I think to myself some times that I would have survived the sight of Captain Flint’s death. I know the one reborn from his ashes would not be James McGraw, and I have it in my mind that I could help shape this new being and guide him through the confusion of a world so turned on its head (for certainly it would be so different from what Flint was used to perceiving). I think, perhaps, that this new man would be a fusion of his two predecessors, and who better to make him than the two people closest to these men? Then I remember that Long John Silver isn’t worthy the passing glance of someone like your Thomas._

_~~Sometimes I wish I’d never taken you to him at all. Sometimes I wish I’d been selfish.~~_

*

John knew the lines of a man’s face and the places where they came from. Knew every furrow, drew meaning from every twitch. The light of a man’s eyes told him the story of his life. He could see the hope in Flint’s eyes, buried beneath the pain and hatred. It wasn’t something he had seen in the captain’s eyes often, and its presence there was more grizzly than it had ever been before. Then, at least, it wasn’t _John_ he’d envisaged to be his end, the hand sending him to the grave.

Men like them didn’t have hope, John knew. He’d learned that in a far too intimate manner as a part of himself was taken from him against his will. How to hope, when you’re the single source of its presence in your comrades’ hearts? How can you believe the lie of your own creation when you know the fragile stuff from which it was born?

Flint had spoken tiredly of a farm far from the sea, painting himself as the tired Odysseus, and John saw the lie. The captain was no Odysseus, and the oar between his hands would only become a shovel to fashion his own grave.

John had only seen true hope in the lines of Flint’s face when the emotion came over him like a man with sweaty, greedy hands, raping his mind, as John told him Thomas was alive. Flint didn’t want that hope, hated himself for it. Perhaps it showed only his mistrust of John, and how much he desperately wanted to believe him.

John had sent him to the source of that hope but could not stand to be present once more to the unceremonious parting with a piece of himself.

How the hope survived in Flint’s chest now, how he could find it in him to hope that John would kill him and grant him his wish, when he knew John hadn’t been able to look at him as he cut the bond between their lying throats and manipulative minds before, he didn’t understand. Perhaps Flint thought there was some selfless pity in the deepest, darkest, pits of his being.

*

“I’ll pay for your ticket and we will be underway by the morrow.” Flint groaned and sat up. The stench of alcohol in the room was overwhelming; John opened the shutters wide and Flint hissed at the sunshine on his unaccustomed eyes. He held a hand up in front of his eyes, squinted until he saw only through small slits to look at John, who had purposefully put himself in the light, leaning perhaps more heavily on his crutch than was necessary. The sunshine made Flint’s hair turn almost golden, like a halo around his head and if that wasn’t blasphemous, John didn’t know what was. The green of his eyes was clear and strong, enhanced by how bloodshot they were, for the haze that had misted them since John first found him had lifted and he looked more conscious than John had previously thought him capable of. He should have expected no less of Captain Flint, however. His ability to become clearheaded in the moments John most needed him not to was uncanny and an obstacle he’d often grumbled about in his younger days.

“I’m not going to Bristol,” Flint said tiredly, rubbing his ruddy cheeks in a valiant attempt to wake himself up. The dust was dancing in the sunlight between them and John thought perhaps if he stood there long enough, in the corner of Flint’s room, in full view of the street below, perhaps he would disintegrate and become a part of it. How easy it would be.

But no. It was night no more, the shadows and the ghosts were stories, and here were simply two old men, too tired to fight. All too tangible, all too real, all too fragile.

“Captain –” John sighed, swallowing a harsh comment, and settled for something better. “Where else can you wake up in the morning and matter?” The glare was a physical thing, and John shifted beneath the heat of it, adjusting his crutch in his armpit.

“I’m not your captain anymore,” Flint grumbled. He staggered to his feet, strode over to the table to splash his face with water, washing away what was left of sleepy comforts.

“You’ll always be my captain,” John said with more honesty than Flint was used to. Flint quirked an eyebrow at him.

“That’s because without me, you are no one.” John straightened, stood proud on his one leg. He had truly filled in around the chest and shoulders in his later years, and he knew that he stroke an impressive figure, despite – or perhaps because of – the crutch. Any man who cared to look closely would see that his injury was not a weakness.

“I am no one,” John said. “I am simply John Silver, an old salt with stories to tell as he serves your food or shows you to your room. I’m the innkeep of the Spyglass, and you’re an old friend in need of a hand. No one needs to know that old Mr Silver was a pirate under the most feared captain the Caribbean ever saw.” Flint raised both eyebrows at that and John scoffed in that old-person manner he had taken on himself. “I am not trying to flatter you. If that was my intention I would be more subtle about it. I know you don’t respond well to flattery; it would get us nowhere and there isn’t much left to flatter anyway.” Flint levelled his eyes at him, standing defiantly in front of him, wearing only a threadbare pair of breeches. The years had been good to him, physically. The scars of his old life were still there, but John saw none that he didn’t recognise. He was still strong, still held himself proudly now that he cared to, now that John had forced him from the gutter. The belly he’d acquired slowly over the last year of their endeavour hadn’t become greater, and John thought he’d look rather healthy, hadn’t it been for the grey tone to his skin or the starved look that clung to his bones. His hipbones were jutting out harshly, his ribs became apparent with every intake of breath, his collarbones made deep shadows form in the hollow above them. John knew that he hadn’t looked like this while Thomas was alive. “Are all your belongings here?” John asked the silence.

Flint sighed deeply and pulled his shirt from a hook on the wall. He seemed to change his mind, and threw it onto the thin bed instead, following it down to bury his face in his hands again. “I won’t go with you to Bristol.”

John scoffed. “Madi is there, expecting us. I’m sure the two of you will find good company in each other. Believe it or not –” John had gotten excited, riled up, speaking with too much energy, like he had done in the old days. He checked himself and stared out the window on the street below. “Believe it or not,” John continued, and his mouth burned with the honesty of his words, “you might find better company in each other than either of you do in me.”

There was an audible sigh in which Flint put all his regret, and it broke John’s ribs to hear it, punctured his lung, stopped his breath in his throat.

“Give her my best. Tell her – tell her I…” There was silence from the other side of the room. John had yet to manage a glance at him, had yet to crawl from the pits of agony in his mind, pits he’d become so accustomed to, pits he’d dreamt about all these years, pits he’d thought he’d finally managed to leave behind.

“You can’t do this to me,” John whispered to the silence, and he felt a thousand years old. Felt like he’d seen centuries pass, every single one darker than the last. The light he’d perceived in the distance had been snuffed out like a candle unwanted before sleep.

“You,” Flint said, “were never supposed to be here. This doesn’t concern you, nothing has concerned you for so many years – and yet here you are with your tongue, whispering lies yet again and I shouldn’t give you the opportunity to breathe in my presence, yet I seem unable to block my mind to you. Why?” He sounded pained, and John felt his anguish in his very own bones.

“You knew I would come,” John said, for he had no other reply. “You know I have never truly been unconcerned. And there has been no lies.”

“Why?” Flint said again, as if he simply could not understand why he was punished in that way, why he had to endure their partnership – in want of a better word, for it was not near enough to explain the thing between them – after everything else that he had been forced to endure. Why must he be burdened with care even now, after he’d been burned so many times?

“I don’t know. And I am sorry.”

*

John tucked his crutch under his arm and picked his bag from the table.

He stood by the door and could not pass the threshold. Yet another important moment in his life that left a bitter taste in his mouth. He looked over the empty room and tried to convince himself that there was nothing here for him, that one more day would not change the reality of the situation. Neither the spindly chair nor the foggy mirror on the wall offered any aid or consolation, so he left with a heavy sigh, and didn’t bother to close the door behind him.

Flint was waiting for him downstairs, like John knew he would be, and joined him in silence. They walked together to the port, and it seemed like there was nothing left to be said between them. Or perhaps there was too much, the words clogging in their throats and strangled their speech. John’s eyes grew hot as he swallowed around the knot.

He limped through the dirty streets of Port Royal, passed beggars, honest workers, carriages, and shops. It was not so different from any other place, but he knew that if he were to look over at the one thing that was different, that truly mattered, his one remaining leg might break from the weight of that gaze and the knowledge that it was the last time he would look into those green eyes and feel their pain.

When they arrived at last, John didn’t immediately board the ship, but turned instead to his captain and let his eyes take him in unperturbed, not bothered by guilt or shame or propriety.

“Come with me,” he said when he met Flint’s eyes.

“Please stop asking. My answer will not change, and you will only bring us more pain than necessary.”

“Please,” John sobbed. Flint shook his head morosely. John didn’t care to hide his face as the first tear rolled down his cheek, but he closed his eyes before reaching blindly for Flint and pulling him toward himself. His arm came around Flint’s shoulder and he buried his hand in his hair to bring him closer. After a few moments, Flint’s hands landed softly on his back, like he was soothing a spooked horse. “Don’t do this to yourself,” John urged into Flint’s ear. He could feel Flint’s heat, his beating heart, _alive, alive, alive_ in his chest, and Flint was more than just the myth. He was the broken pieces left behind, the burning soul in the charred chest.

“Take care of her. For me.” Flint’s voice was hoarse, like he too felt the weight on John’s chest. “Tell her, to never stop believing, and to not lose hope – tell her –” Flint’s voice broke, and he swallowed a shaky breath “- that I would have gone with her, to the end of the road, no matter which end. Tell her I would never give up our cause.” Flint tightened his arms around John as if he knew that he’d just torn him to pieces, ripping flesh from muscles and muscles from bones and made him nothing.

“She would tell you the same. She would want you to take care of yourself.” He knew Flint could hear the tears in his voice and he had no wish to conceal them. Silver trembled and stepped back. His fingers slid from Flint’s neck but his own head made a jerk, like half a shake, as he grimaced at the man in front of him. “Why?” he moaned, and it was accusatory this time, angry because it was all that he had left in him to keep him from crumbling to the ground like so much dead weight. He wondered if Flint would feel it lifting off his shoulders.

“Sometimes,” Flint said, and did not look him in the eye, “there are no good answers to the questions that need it most.”

*

When John entered, he saw how Madi immediately looked up from her task with hopeful eyes, like she must have done every day for weeks, expecting his return. He came into the room and her eyes shifted, looking for someone behind him. John shook his head and Madi turned away with tight lips and a furrow between her brows. She didn’t enquire after his health or ask about his travels. When he re-joined her downstairs after putting away what few things he’d brought, all he asked was how many barrels of ale they needed, and how much fish.

*

It was long before the news reached them; so long John wondered if Flint had decided to cling on to what was left of his life. It made the blow all the harder, and he thought perhaps Flint had done it on purpose, to injure him one last time, as if his revenge wasn’t already complete.

Captain Flint had drunk himself to death in Port Royal, it said, and that was all. John assumed he’d been put in a shallow grave somewhere too far from the churchyard to comfort his spirit.

At night he could not hold the fragile dam together with his gnarled fingers anymore, but Madi did not reach out to comfort him. She thought, perhaps, that he’d not done all that was in his power to bring Flint to them. Perhaps she thought he should have put him in chains if that was the only option.

John suffered in the cold and the silence, and wondered if he’d been placed on this earth with no other meaning than to torture the ones closest to him, the ones he loved. He wondered, thinking back, if he’d ever done a single good deed in his life.

*

Years later, when the chorus of agonies had become a constant, dull ache at the back of his head, John heard talk of a treasure hunt, and his veins ran cold. It was no hardship to endear himself to the boy, Jim Hawkins, or the others save the overly suspicious captain, and it was no hardship to convince Hands to join him once again, to have one last go at _the life_.

He’d always hoped that Flint had gone after the cache himself to help him and Thomas to as comfortable a life as possible. Then, when Thomas had died he’d had the same hope for Flint, that perhaps he could retrieve it, do something with it that might restore him. He allowed himself, now, to take use of the thing that had cost so many people so much.

And even though it did not go entirely as planned, John got his hands on enough coins to take Madi and go somewhere else, start anew in another place and do some good with the years they had left, and they became, perhaps, the most peaceful years they ever had, even though John looked at his stolen treasure and could see only the blood dripping from each coin, could hear only the cries of the dead, outraged that in the end _he_ was the only one to ever benefit from their misery.

* * *

Gwendolyn Foley was rarely happy. She had not always been a melancholy creature, her parents told her. She’d been a lively young girl, curious and trusting of the world, a child who loved play and stories and songs.

A man in the village was inclined to marry her despite her shortcomings. She was a beautiful creature, kind and innocent. They did not see the darkness in her eyes, they did not see how she longed for a different life.

He was rich and handsome, and every girl wanted him – every father mistrusted him. He had proposed to marry her, and she could not refuse him.

“Please,” she whispered as she twisted the coin in her slender fingers one dark night. “Please, help me. Tell me what I need to do, for I cannot love him.” She remembered the rhythm of the song, but not the words, and she hummed it now, like she had so many times before. There was never an answer, despite the promise he had made.

“Please,” she whimpered. “I know not what to do.” He came to her, then, for the first and last time. She could see so clearly the blue of his eyes, the wrinkles beside them. She had trusted him like she never again trusted another. She remembered what he had told her, all those years ago as they watched the sunset.

_Love is not supposed to be a cage where one is more powerful than the other. It is important that you remember this. Many will try to fool you if you let them._

She blinked away tears. “But what am I supposed to do?” she cried. _Leave_ , he said, _run now and never look back and regret. Know that you did the right thing._

Putting aside all reason, Gwendolyn did the bravest thing she was ever to do. She left a life that she did not want and stepped for the first time into the unknown, a place she had first encountered in the bottomless depths of a pair of old, anguished eyes as clear as the sea they’d sailed on.

She met a young man on a ship, and his name was Jim Hawkins. She came to love Jim Hawkins, and he came to love her, and they did everything they wanted, untouched by misery and in the prayers of one old, disbelieving blue-eyed man who lived on an island with his negress and a green parrot by the name of Captain Flint.

She hummed the rhythm of the song, and Jim Hawkins sung the words as she remembered them.

If he ever knew, John would see that his life had not been entirely devoid of meaning.

**Author's Note:**

> I am sorry. Truly.
> 
> I don't know why I keep writing angst. I guess I'm just terrible.
> 
> I hope you liked, though! Like... some emotional masochists like myself might have, maybe.
> 
> Please tell me what you think, comments and kudos are love.


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